James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Jeanette and I have been mooching Wi-Fi from coffee shops like everyone else does.
She did this sketch of a cafe patron using a Micron brush pen.

I guess we’re part of an alarming trend. In one Starbucks, we noticed 14 patrons. Eleven of them were busy with laptops, two were interested in hand-held devices, and one was a kid playing quietly with an empty coffee cup.

13 comments:

The little town I live in is bucking this trend because two of our three cafés are 50 yr old local businesses with no interest in wifi. You go in there and it's noisy - people stop in, see someone they barely know, and start chatting. Definitely an older crowd, though - you don't find many 20 yr olds at wifi dead zones.

I wonder, when today's 20 yr olds are 70, will they have discovered the value in talking to people rather than messaging them?

I live in a house with my girlfriend and two other room-mates. We all have computers, and at times we'll all be on them in separate rooms of the house. In these situations we sometimes email or instant message each other rather than walking down the hall.We still have sit-down dinners together at the table every night though, so it's not like we're going to forget what each other look like, but it is still a bit odd.

We now live in a fairly rural area where our internet options are very limited (one prvider for our area). If you go in to town or another town, they have some wi fi coffee shops. I suspect that anything people can do to save money, they are doing it, including using someone else's wifi. I actually think that is the real trend.

I find it funny to see this post, right as I was planning to get out of the apartment and go to a coffee shop to get some work done on a paper! I use wi-fi at cafes to keep me connected while I do work, and at the same time get me out of my apartment, where I'm more easily distracted.

ooh sometimes that annoys me so much! I liked it better when Starbucks limited their internet to at&t customers. Now every time I go all the good seats are taken by laptop users. If I'm lucky, I'll find a seat outside, where the sun is burning and all the smokers hang out.

the iphone thing bugs the hell out of me. all my friends have iphones, and many times during a conversation, they'll glance down and fiddle with it, WHILE I'M TALKING TO THEM! :) Do they not think I would notice?